


Topple You Down

by SQ (proteinscollide)



Category: Dare Me - Megan Abbott
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:07:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proteinscollide/pseuds/SQ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beth looks for a new start, flying under the radar this time; but she runs into the past instead, a second chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Topple You Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [great_whatsit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/great_whatsit/gifts).



> Many thanks to Ro (littlerhymes) for getting me to read the book in the first place, for beta-reading, and for giving me fic ideas to work with.

Going to college is meant to be about new beginnings, a new Beth. Here, people don't know about the murder, the fall, her fractured heart and her broken skull. Here she's not Beth the cheerleader, Beth the brave, Beth the baddest bitch forever and ever amen; here she's a honor roll student, quiet and unassuming, bruised on the inside not the out. She gets to start again. 

Except life never stops throwing her for a loop. She sees Addy out of the corner of her eye on campus one evening, gone when she turns her head. And then it's like she can't stop thinking about her, when all she can see are glimpses of Addy's shiny hair swinging, the flip of her skirt, as some girl with Addy's long lean frame walks away, and away, and again and again, until Beth finally realises it's not her subconscious, it really is Addy, at the same school. 

All those miles, her mom driving her in silence all those hours, they weren't enough to get away. 

It's not surprising she didn't realise Addy would be attending the same college. She hadn't talked to Addy in months, not since she stopped going to school, stopped reading the posts on her Facebook wall from the rest of the squad, cloying with curiosity, concern with barely sheathed claws. Addy was saying goodbye the night she came to visit in the hospital, letting go of Beth as she shed the rest of the year, leaving nothing but a hard, shiny shell. 

She doesn't know how to approach the new Addy as the new Beth. She opens her ears to the gossip swirling around her in class and realises that even here, they know about the murder, the fall; but the story is told a million different ways, each more sordid than the last, each telling the world that Addy Hanlon is not to be messed with. They say other things too: _she's a cheer queen, she's rushing Delta Zeta, she's hot_. None of these things surprise Beth. It still doesn't solve how Beth wakes up some nights gasping into her pillow, pulled awake by the memory of the ground rushing up toward her, the phantom caress of leather around her wrist.

In the end, it's a bad habit that brings them face to face again. Beth has a tree she goes to on quiet nights, when she can no longer memorise another set of bones and muscles, more reminders of the fragile human body and the ways in which it can be damaged. Instead, her body, still agile despite the fact she no longer trains and pushes and punishes it day after day, still remembers the limber movements that served her so well, knows instinctively how to get from earth to sky in steps with easy economy, until she can settle in the crook between two large branches, cradled safe and hidden. Lights up a cigarette then, breathes in, and blows out with each puff of smoke a little part of the girl she used to be.

"I'll take a light," she hears from above her, and Beth starts, frowns at the intrusion. She peers up into the canopy and who else but another cheerleader would have the grace and confidence to climb so high, to stay so still? 

"Here," she says instead, lighting another from the tip of her cigarette, passing it up, letting their fingers touch. Addy doesn't say thanks, purses her lips instead and studies the glowing end, the burning paper. 

And that's all it takes, to not be friends again.

~~~

Beth stands in front of the sorority house, looks up at its faux Georgian façade lending an air of respectability and gentility to the whole enterprise. Beth’s not fooled. She knows what it must be like behind the stolid brick walls, the miasma of teen dreams and vanilla soap and cherry-scented lip gloss. She runs her palms down her thighs, down the dark denim of her jeans, and worries at her bottom lip with her teeth, lost in the memory of a memory.

She doesn’t want to go inside, wary of opening that door on an all-enveloping girl world. Old Beth, Beth-that-was, she used to run it, rule it. Now she just takes a step toward the porch.

“Hi,” Addy says, opening the door just as Beth hits the top step, a puzzled look on her face. “I could see you standing outside for a bit. Are you waiting for someone?” She leans forward through the open door, and Beth inches back half a step instinctually. 

“I’m looking for Clare. We’re meant to be going over our Chem assignment together.”

“She’s late then,” Addy says. “There’s no one else in the house at the moment.” She pauses, then says slowly, “I guess you could come and wait inside.” Her voice rises at the end of the sentence, and Beth feels as sure of herself as the questioning inflection. 

The inside has the same old-fashioned sensibility, a wide staircase dominating the entrance, an incongruous contrast to the girlish debris strewn over its banisters; colorful streamers, a fluttering scarf tied around the newel. Addy stands on the second step with her arms around the post, and there’s a long moment of silence, as if she’s waiting to be paid court. Beth finds herself craning her head back a little to look her in the face, and wonders again at the transformation of Addy into this creature.

Beth remembers the Addy in her past, Addy in her shell, the Addy she had that suffocating, jealous crush on. _I wanted you by my side, Beth remembers, like a warrior queen and her consort. I wanted you to be me and want me and want to be me_. 

She looks at Addy now. She’s in denim shorts, artfully frayed at the edges, a pink tank top, loose in a way that emphasises how slim she is now, her bright cyan bra visible at the sides under her arms. She looks tanned, terrific; she could be Beth’s twin from two years ago. _Be careful what you wish for_. 

“Don’t you have any classes today?” Beth finally says, to break the silence. 

“No,” Addy says. “I’ve got a Sociology paper due tomorrow and I’ve left it last minute as usual, so I‘m getting further behind in my other classes to make up for it.” She laughs, loud, and then they’re both silent as a faint echo of the sound bounces around the grand hallway. 

Beth’s phone beeps in her pocket, an urgent sound, and she starts, looking away from Addy. She fishes it out of her pocket and reads the message, sighing. 

“Sorry, seems I didn’t even need to come here anyway. Clare’s at the library, says we should meet there instead.”

It’s a demand, not a discussion. Beth’s not sure why she picked a former cheerleader as a lab partner, save that she was drawn, maybe, by some unconscious force, the recognition of something familiar in the other girl’s manner, the easy grace of her body. Those who’ve flown high above the heads of others, they’re different; the experience changes you, makes you realize how much further you can go than all those watching below.

“Wait, I’ll come with,” Addy says, in that same, sure tone. “I could do with a change of scenery.” She runs up the stairs with light steps, and she’s back a short moment later, a book bag slung across her body, ponytail swinging. 

“Ready to go?” Addy asks, already moving toward the door. Beth doesn’t answer, just turns to go. Behind her, she can smell vanilla and cherry, a world she’d shut the door on. She knows Addy is close on her heels.

~~~

The fifth or sixth time Addy just happens upon her in the library the next semester, Beth realizes it’s too often for coincidence. The first few times, Addy bothers with pleasantries, some expression of surprise, before setting her books down on the table in the back corner of the library, another place Beth thinks of as her place to hide. Sometimes she won’t settle straight away, wanders the library and its surrounds chatting to friends, admirers, people from her classes, but when she finally sits down, adjacent but not beside Beth with the corner of the table between them, she knuckles down and studies hard, really reads her texts and works for that 4.0 GPA.

Beth wonders sometimes how the two of them made it even this far, when neither of them bothered those first three years of high school, when cheer was the major thing, the only thing at times. It’d been a hard lesson to learn, senior year, feeling tested over and over as she pulled her grades up bit by bit. But Beth had a goal and she’d always been a tenacious, quick learner; so she took the space that had been reserved for drill and routines and cheers, and she dumped them all out so she could fill it with facts and figures and dates and symbols instead. And it’d been worth it, for that acceptance to a decent college out of state, far away from home and all those lost cheer-led future dreams. 

Beth wonders now how Addy did it, and what had driven _her_. 

Now Addy comes and studies with her at the library, though they rarely talk to each other, and never actually study together. But Addy finds her again and again, and Beth never makes excuses to leave when Addy joins her, at the library, up the tree smoking side by side. And the whole time, Beth thinks _this is it is this it_ , the recalibration of all those years of friendship, those years she yearned for Addy and never said anything but gave her heart on a bracelet, that year Addy threw it all away for the approval of girls who shouldn’t have mattered. Beth tries to be grateful for what this is. 

“Come help me find this book,” Addy says, closing the one on her desk with a loud thump that reverberates in their corner of the library. She’s not asking and as she pulls Beth up by the wrist and leads her away, Beth follows. She doesn’t say anything when Addy doesn’t let go, still holding her hand as they clatter up one floor, two, to the quiet, still level at the top, filled with row upon row of musty reference texts long forgotten. 

“What could you possibly need up here?” Beth asks, as she walks down past aisle after aisle. Apart from her voice there’s no sound but the swish of Addy’s skirt as she moves deeper and deeper into the thicket of shelves and books, and as Beth follows she can hear their breathing, and see the swirling motes of dust in the weak light from a bank of lonely lights. 

Addy stops and leans back against a shelf. She pulls Beth toward her with a hand on each hip, closer and closer until Beth is bracketed by Addy’s legs. Her eyes are bright and she looks at back at Beth like she did that night when they still shared that fever dream, high on sugar and vodka and a connection that Beth thought was forever. Beth tears her eyes from Addy’s gaze because it’s too much, hope and lives and friendships that have been lost in that look. Her eyes drop to the level of Addy’s chest and she watches, mesmerized, as the outline of Addy’s breasts rise and fall with each breath. 

“You want me,” Addy says in a low voice. “I know you do.”

Beth bites back the flash of irritation she feels, the unspoken answer loud in her ears. Now she knows Addy‘s game. _You want me too_. But new or old, Addy still needs Beth to make that move, take the lead again. 

Beth slides her mouth over Addy’s, pressing her deeper into the books behind her back, holding Addy’s wrists in her hands. Addy moans and shifts her hips under Beth’s, and Beth couldn’t stop this now, not even as her treacherous mind brings up the memory of flying, then falling. In this moment, she’ll always be Beth of the leap, Beth the brave. 

Addy tastes like soft serve, creamy and cool. Beth lets go of her wrists and slide a hand under Addy’s skirt, stroking her thigh. They kiss, lighter, harder, finding that rhythm that makes Addy melt under her and yes Beth wants this, she wants Addy, but most of all she wants _more_. Beth hesitates just a second before she draws her fingers under the waistband of Addy’s panties and pulls them down, slowly. 

“Do you want me to?” she murmurs quietly against Addy’s mouth, then, in an even softer voice, “Do you trust me?” Her fingers are already dipping between Addy’s legs a teasing caress, and Addy’s eyes fly open, holding Beth’s gaze for a dazed, puzzled moment.

Then she says _yes_ , in a whisper, and Beth realizes she should’ve done this back then, should’ve let the alcohol and sugar and her dreams take the blame after, just so she could’ve touched Addy like this, branding her as Beth’s, going further than they ever did when Beth thought desire would crush her, stop her heart. 

Beth folds herself down gracefully, on her knees as she draws up Addy’s skirt, tongue pressing up against Addy to hear her moan, hands sliding up and down the outside of Addy’s thighs and around the curve of her ass. Beth stays there, greedily swallowing the desperate little noises Addy makes, until Addy is whimpering and shifting back and forth on Beth’s tongue, holding the back of Beth’s head under the folds of her skirt, clutching at her with increasing grip as she starts to pant and comes apart under Beth’s tongue, slumping back against the shelves with a cry, an arm flung over her face as she rides out her orgasm.

Addy pulls ineffectually at her underwear with shaking hands, and Beth helps her draw them back over her knees, up her thighs. She kisses Addy’s hand, places it on her waist; leans in and kisses Addy with the taste of her still on her tongue, and Addy opens up, finally soft and pliant. This is everything Beth wanted after that first kiss, the heady feeling of Addy’s lips on hers, their hands under tops and shorts; everything she couldn’t name, didn’t understand, and raged against as Addy pulled away in the days and weeks and the summer after, cosying up to the others.

Addy tightens her grip on Beth’s waist, and Beth puts her hand over Addy’s and draws it under her own skirt, under her own panties, letting Addy feel how wet she is already, from wanting her. Addy lets Beth guide her fingers deeper inside, a soft and tremulous touch, until she’s rubbing her clever fingers against Beth, crooking her fingers inside to hear Beth moan and shake. When Beth comes she feels her heart stop for a moment, just as she always thought it would, for Addy.

They don’t talk as they straighten out their clothing, brush the dust from Addy’s back, Beth’s knees. They don’t say anything as they gather up their books from their desk in the corner, Beth clutching hers to her chest, Addy’s book bag over one shoulder. They don’t touch as they walk out of the library together. At the end of the path, they’ll go their separate ways, Addy to the sorority house, Beth to the dorms. 

But as Beth turns to walk away, she feels the lightest touch as Addy’s fingers brush hers, a reminder of what they’ve done, who they are to each other. Beth is sure that tomorrow, or the day after, or the one after that, Addy will stop by her table in the corner again, eyes lowered, long fingers tapping on a book Beth’s stopped reading as soon as she smelled the vanilla and cherry nearby. 

New or old, it doesn’t matter how much they set out to forget. Addy will hold onto Beth like a piece of her that she can’t live without, the piece that reminds her of the shell she came out of, that she’s never retreating back into.


End file.
